Abdellah Taïa
Abdellah Taïa is a writer and film director born in Salé in 1973. He lives in Paris.
After having studied French literature at the Mohamed V University in Rabat, and at the University of Geneva, he completed his Ph.D. in French literature in La Sorbonne. During his stay in France, he discovers cinema and painting, as well as a passion for writing.
In 1999, the first texts of Abdellah Taïa are published under a collection of short stories by Loïc Barrière, Des nouvelles du Maroc, with Mohamed Choukri, Salim Jay, and Rachid O.
His first short stories collection, Mon Maroc, is published in 2001, and gets him a De Flore Prize. Then, he writes and publishes several novels, among which his third one, L’Armée du salut, made later on, into a cinematic film. He receives the Grand Prize of the Jury of the festival Premiers Plans d’Angers in 2014.
In Mai 2019, his book La Vie lente, launched the same year, in March is selected by the jury of the Renaudot prize of 2019.
Politically engaged, Abdellah Taïa is one of the first Moroccan artists who openly tackled the subject of his sexuality. In April 2009, he publishes in the weekly paper TelQuel a letter called “L’homosexualité expliquée à ma mère” (homosexuality as explained to my mother).
Abdellah Taïa is also engaged in treating the problems that face the forgotten Moroccan youth. For this purpose, he has been the director of the collective book Lettres à un jeune marocain, published in 2009 and distributed for free in August 2009, in Morocco as a sub-publication that accompanies the TelQuel magazine.
expositions & événements
Abdellah Taïa
